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WILD SWING: Tiger Woods' publicity nightmare might boost interest in the PGA Tour and his corporate sponsors, but it might tarnish their images as well.EPA

Even the prospect of a golf landscape temporarily without Tiger Woods is not one that PGA Tour officials, advertisers and sponsors care to ponder as speculation swirls around the popular athlete’s private life, which has kept him secluded in his Florida home.

Yet as corporate sponsors like Gatorade and Gillette consider ways to deal with recent negative coverage of the world’s No. 1 golfer, some media companies are seeing an upside.

Woods’ absence has prompted flashbacks to the eight months when Woods was recovering from knee surgery, making him less visible late last year and early this year.

In that time, TV ratings for golf tournaments tracked by Nielsen Media slumped almost 50 percent, causing advertising rates to fall. Attendance on courses dropped off too.

“Tiger’s presence at a golf tournament and being on the leader board generates significantly increased ratings,” said Neal Pilson of the consulting firm Pilson Communications. “When deals are negotiated, the fact Tiger is a member of the tour influences what networks pay.”

The business environment was already tough for the PGA Tour as it suffered losses of corporate sponsors over the past year.

For many fans, Woods is golf. Almost singlehandedly, he has ushered in an era of multimillion-dollar endorsements and lucrative appearance money. Product endorsements made him, perhaps, the world’s richest athlete, with assets estimated at $1 billion.

But not everything Tiger touches turns to gold.

Before the accident, Beverage Digest reported Gatorade was dropping its “Tiger Focus” drink to make room for other products, quoting an unidentified executive saying the company preferred to use Woods across its entire group of products. Still, for the first 10 months of 2009, the Tiger drink’s volume was down 34 percent.

For now, Gatorade and other sponsors are standing by their man, and while ads featuring Woods have disappeared recently from prime-time TV and the 19 cable networks monitored by Nielsen — the last prime-time ad with Woods, a 30-second spot by Gillette, ran on Nov. 29 — that decline could be due to the golf season winding down.

Officials with Procter & Gamble’s Gillette, Electronic Arts and Nike said their companies have not altered marketing plans.